ERRORS IN MEDICATION

Thousands of elderly care home patients are subjected to errors in their medication.

On any given day, seven out of ten residents are given wrongly administered drugs.

The errors, by care home staff, doctors and pharmacists, include giving the incorrect dosage, not giving drugs at the correct time or ensuring patients take their drugs.

Such mistakes can lead to adverse reactions, emergency hospital admissions and even death.

The Scottish Government’s Review of NHS Pharmaceutical care of Patients in the Community in Scotland noted that care homes residents have multiple ailments and complex drug regimes, but said:

… Seven out of ten residents receive some form of medication error each day.

Experts have agreed that action must be taken to address a ‘ticking time bomb’ as thousands of older patients face admission to care homes.

They said ‘poor medicines management’ is the reason for many errors and they called for regular input by pharmacists into patient care.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland has set up a working group to examine how pharmaceutical care in care homes could be improved.

Critics described the findings as ‘deeply worrying’ and called for urgent action to ensure the safety of patients.

A spokesperson for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said:

… Patients are extremely vulnerable when they transfer from one care setting to another and records do not always follow the patient or go to the community pharmacist.

… There is a need for sharing of information to one single electronic patient record.

According to the review, as the country’s population ages, and patients live longer with medical complications, there are likely to be ‘major challenges for pharmaceutical care in the future’.

After looking at the needs of residents in care homes, experts also found that most medication errors are caused by doctors or pharmacists.

The report found:

… The increasing dependency and multi-morbidity of residents, many with dementia, requires high quality pharmaceutical care, to meet the medication needs of individual residents.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society added that the ‘time bomb’ is one of demography, saying that we have increasing numbers of elderly people with several long-term conditions and, to accommodate this, there is a need to develop more integrated care solutions.

In response to criticism that errors are occurring so shockingly frequently, and that everyone must get round the table to work out how this may be sorted, a Scottish Government official said:

… We are looking at ways to improve pharmaceutical services by working with GPs, the NHS and professional bodies.